The antidote to ideologies

CRASH2: are these the Four Horseman of the American global eclipse?

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of serious analysis around about why the Abe Nirp experiment in Japan is having the diametrically opposite effect to that intended – ie, counterintuitively, the Yen is strengthening and the BoJ bonds are being seen as a safe haven. I wonder if more attention should be paid to who (or what) is buying the Yen and its bonds? There are, after all, two obvious culprits: China and the US.

Under the weight of cheap oil, the Saudi Central bank’s net foreign assets have dropped 38 billion riyals. Cuts in Saudi government spending to shore up public finances are also taking a toll on the economy, with Saudi consumers spending less for two months in a row. 70% of all Saudi revenues relate to oil. The initial catalyst for oil price drops was deliberate US overproduction, ostensibly to bring pressure to bear on Russia. Since then, the situation has been exacerbated by falling demand. But the net result of State Dept foreign policy is that the United States’ dominance of (and access to) oil has never been greater.

Despite warnings from all quarters about the disastrous effect of rate rises on emerging economies with huge USDollar denominated debts, Janet Yellen raised rates last December. In the build-up to the March US Fed meeting, she was under massive pressure from multinational CEO hawks to raise again.

The effect of NATO member Recep Erdogan’s deliberate infliction of 320,000 young male Islamists on the eurozone economy has been entirely negative….as has the Syrian refugee problem,which is a direct outcome of US policy in that country. Erdogan doesn’t break wind without asking for US permission first. The pressure of largely US-run vulture finds on ClubMed in general and Greece in particular has helped that economy reach a stage where it is flatlining. The crazy austerity programme for ClubMed was German inspired – and the Germany/US level of security/geopolitical policy integration has never been in doubt.

Whichever way you cut it, the result of US geopolitical strategy could be said (albeit with more evidence needed to nail it definitively) to have neutralised competition from Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the European Union and the Brics.

Surely it is not unnatural to wonder whether Washington really does have a vision of global competition…or merely the hegemonic goal of near-monopoly control of global business.

21 thoughts on “CRASH2: are these the Four Horseman of the American global eclipse?”

The US may think they control the Japanese economy, and it may well look that way from the US controlled media. But the fact remains that the US lacks the technology and it lacks the know-how to compete with the Japanese directly.

There is nobody else can make those little black widgets that make cars run more efficiently. Not the Americans, not the Germans and certainly not the Koreans or the Chinese! This kind of technological ‘gap’ exists in quite a number of areas from silicon wafers to flat screen tvs to smartphone touchpads – and a dozen more.

Anything at the top of the technological food chain is likely to be Japanese. With a few exceptions like ARM.

The Japs aren’t bothered if they look big or not, because there’s nothing the US or anybody else can do about the fact that the Japanese are streets ahead.

…all the US can do is to posture and pretend they have a near-monopoly of global business: use their printed money to bang their aircraft carriers on the desk to intimidate a few small countries. Smash modest economies like Syria and plague Europe with refugees.

At least Japan isn’t waging war with its technology! Because if it did, the worlds production lines would grind to a halt within weeks… something the USA can’t do, for all their might.

I wonder, whilst contemplating world business domination, are they completely in ignorance of the troubling brewing in the homeland? Social division is becoming more acute and there seems to be a realisation that the ‘American dream’ is an impossibility for the majority no matter how many jobs they hold down. The effects of wealth being concentrated in a minority in a country with no welfare, is stark.

One day the USA will be forced to exchange carte blanche for a white flag, although one suspects this will only happen when the Great American People manage to take back their constitution, which has taken some direct hits in recent times, and their democracy: until then, Washington will continue to be the tail wagging the global dog. The dog has always had one or two fleas, but the current level of infestation represents real cruelty on the part of the owner, whose whereabouts are becoming a cause for concern. There are reports that s/he may have been tricked into thinking that the fleas need to be protected for some reason, or that they are merely harmless parasitic playmates.

Is this the eclipse of the US economy? This group is small enough to prosecute – that is to say, they can be made scapegoats so that the populace can see the government is “active against fraud”.

If Wall Street is this corrupt, quite what is the US economy based on? Banks spinning derivatives on the tops of poles and hoping the stockmarket doesn’t blow an ill wind… Governments borrowing too much money rather than taxing their corporations… all in all, it looks like a paper tiger.

But $25milllion is peanuts compared to the real frauds, those practiced on Greece, not to mention the so-called ‘toxic assets’ which were fraud through and through. Well, it’s what America does best: deceiving others and lying to themselves.

What about the Japanese themselves? Major investors across the world over the last 40 years, they are likely to bring capital home in the face of global concerns. The dollar has rallied from Y80. A correction was overdue.

The key question in your post today JW , is cui bono, cui prodest. I am coming to the view that the world economic systems are being rearranged to suit the major corporations. These entities are not bound by loyalty to state or shareholder accountability. They are independent of these constraints and look to develop a framework that suits their primary goal i.e. maximisation of profit which equals maximisation of power.
The raft of free trade agreements which severely restrict sovereignty as well as moving jobs to the cheapest source should be clear evidence of this trend. I cannot say whether this started out as a deliberate policy but as corporations grew and outgrew their national boundaries, their view on what was best for their business also changed.
We go through the charade of election in the democratic west but strangely nothing seems to change much when the opposition gets their chance except that the erstwhile opposition digs its snout into the trough deeper than its predecessors.
The American elections and the 4 year charade accompanying them a clear case in point. This also leads me to doubt whether the Brexit exercise is also another exercise in futility. Even if the vote is to leave, unless it is decisively to leave ( greater than 2/3rd of the voting group) the result will not be clear cut. If 50% turn out and 52% vote to leave all the result shows is 26% of the voting group feel strongly to leave, 24% want to stay and the majority could not give a stuff.
That is the root cause of the creeping corporate oligarchism in the democratic west. The majority just do not give a stuff.

@Gemma: As far as I know VW refused to co-operate with the authorites, well certainly in the US, I suspect the Big Broom was called for, just as they were lifting the Big Carpet….One of those Too Big To Prosecute cases, you know, the really really diffcult ones that are just not in the public’s interest to pursue. It’s par for the course these days.
Anyway, must fly, can’t seem to find any of those big brown envelopes anywhere, maybe they’ll have some down at my little local post office….

Indeed, I first had the thought some thirty years ago that one day we would all wake up to running advertisements telling us that businesses x, y and z have now deduced that they control 90% of the world economy and have decided it was time to do away with governments and states.

As to the sheeple problem, well it is unfortunate that at least 85% of folk ARE indeed sheeple, they don’t simply mindlessly follow powerful leaders/celebrities, they WANT to mindlessly follow them, they want to be nannied, they want to be told what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Homo-sapiens is a pack animal, it is hard-coded into our DNA (well, not those of us here, of course). Just look around at any grouping, crowd, assembly or whatever of strangers, when there is a need for someone to stand up and take charge. What do the majority do? Step back and look at everyone else desperate it won’t be them.

@Harold Rosario:
A study of the origins of NAFTA and later international trade agreements shows that they were proposed and promoted by leaders are large multinational corporations such as General Electric and other large American-based corporations. Their aim appears to have been to transfer production to low-wage, low-regulation countries like Mexico, then China, then to south-east Asian countries, while maintaining free access to the consumer markets in Europe and North America. Having had outstanding success in achieving this aim, the multinationals (through their bought-and-paid-for politicians) have moved on to TPP and TTIP, which will elevate multinational corporations to supra-national status immune to control by any nation or its laws. Public health and safety legislation (and any other national measure) that would impair future profit expectations can now be punished by TPP and TTIP arbitration panels with jurisdiction and power over and above national courts.
The “New World Order” and “New World Government” are not some forms of United Nations creature that wannabe whistle-blowers rant about – rather the New World Order in the Western world resides in the Boardrooms of a small number of corporations and banks owned and controlled by an even smaller number of immensely wealthy families. National governments are being reduced to political false-front operations used to maintain the popular illusion of democratic control by the masses.
The major threat to the TPP/TTIP multinational agenda is the rise of the Eurasian/Brics/Shanghai Cooperation Organization/non-US Dollar bloc. Hence the US moves to destabilize Russia through regime change in Ukraine, to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia through sanctions, to depose the pro-Iranian, pro-Russian Assad government in Syria, to displace Russian oil and gas exports to Europe, war on the Russian Ruble, military moves against China and its shipping routes, the use of NATO/France/UK forces to eliminate Gaddafi in Libya after he persisted in promoting a Gold-backed currency (the Dinar) for trade, and the US push for Saudi Arabia to flood the world’s oil markets and push down the price to bankrupt Russia.

Excellent synopsis. Canadian manufacturing has been eviscerated by NAFTA. Trudeau Junior has already signed on to its even more destructive bigger brother. Yet more evidence that voting is a charade. The same deep state actors continue to run things behind the scenes whoever is elected.

The fact that principal Neocon criminals like Kristol are desperate to prevent a Trump victory is reason enough to hope for a Trump administration.